miserable, breaks her heart, and cries herself to death! This', says I, 'is the state of many a lady that has had £10,000 to her portion.'
He did not know how feelingly I spoke this, and what extremities I had gone through of this kind; how near I was to the very last article above, viz. crying myself to death; aud how I really starved for almost two years together.
But he shook his head, and said, where had I lived? and what dreadful families had I lived among, that had frighted me into such terrible apprehensions of things? that these things indeed might happen where men run into hazardous things in trade, and, without prudence or due consideration, launched their fortunes in a degree beyond their strength, grasping at adventures beyond their stocks, and the like; but that, as he was stated in the world, if I would embark with him, he had a fortune equal with mine; that, together, we should have no occasion of engaging in business any more, but that in any part of the world where I had a mind to live, whether England, France, Holland, or where I would, we might settle, and live as happily as the world could make any one live; that, if I desired the management of our estate, when put together, if I wonld not trust him with mine, he would trust me with his; that we would be upon one bottom, and I should steer. 'Ay', says I, 'you'll allow me to steer—that is, hold the helm; but you'll con the ship, as they call it; that is, as at sea, a boy serves to stand at the helm, but he that gives him the orders is pilot.'
He laughed at my simile. 'No', says he; 'you shall be pilot then; you shall con the ship.' 'Ay', says I, 'as long as you please; but you can take the helm out of my hand when you please, and bid me go spin. It is not you', says I, 'that I suspect, but the laws of matrimony puts the power into your hands, bids you do it, commands you to command, and binds me, forsooth, to obey. You, that are now upon even terms with me, and I with you', says I, 'are the next hour set up upon the throne, and the humble wife placed at your footstool; all the rest, all that you call oneness of interest, mutual affection, and the like, is courtesy and kindness then, and a woman is indeed infinitely obliged where she meets with it, but can't help herself where it fails.'
Well, he did not give it over yet, but came to the serious part, and there, he thought, he should be too many for me. He first hinted that marriage was decreed by Heaven; that it was the fixed state of life, which God had appointed for man's felicity, and for establishing a legal posterity; that there could be no legal claim of estates by inheritance but by children born in wedlock; that all the rest was sunk under scandal and illegitimacy; and very well he talked upon that subject indeed.
But it would not do; I took him short there. 'Look you, sir', said I; 'you have an advantage of me there, indeed, in my particular case, but it would not be generous to make use of it. I readily grant that it were better for me to have married you than to admit you to the liberty I have given you, but, as I could not reconcile my judgment to marriage, for the reasons above, and had kindness enough for you, and obligation too much on me to resist you, I suffered your rudeness, and gave up my virtue. But I have two things before me to heal up that breach of honour, without that desperate one of marriage, and those are, repentance for what is past, and putting an end to it for time to come.'
He seemed to be concerned to think that I should take him in that
